The ranting Post Office worker

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I was running errands the other day and decided to stop at the local post office at the other end of town to mail off some eBay packages. I use this Post Office occasionally, but the main Post Office I use is the downtown location near my office. I walked in and there was a line of about four people. The counter clerk says “next” and a lady walks up with few packages.

She tells the clerk she is not sure of the address on one of the packages for Frostburg, MD. Normally the little terminal machine they use will pop this up so I’m puzzled when the clerk looks frustrated and starts looking frantically all around the counter area. He finally locates two extremely tattered directories and begins thumbing through them looking for the Frostburg zip code. This goes on (not exaggerating) for about 5 minutes, and the line has grown to approx 8 people in the meantime. He can’t find the zip code and decides someone must have torn the page out. He yells to the clerk in the back who is sorting packages asking if they know Frostburg’s zip code. The other clerk yells “I think it’s (numbers) but double check”. More punching numbers into the terminal and lots of sighing. We’re about 11 minutes into this transaction at this point.

I pull out my PDA phone and google up the zip code in 30 seconds. I tell him, and he proceeds to finalize her transaction. The crowd is muttering at this point. I finally get to the front and he thanks me for looking up the number. I tell him “no problem” and then ask if the terminals don’t do that automatically.

An then it begins…

He says (loudly and angrily) )

“Yes they do, but I haven’t been TRAINED! (now this guy is in his late 30’s to early 40’s if he’s a day). But the big shots, the mangers, they don’t care about the workers! They only care about THIS!”, the green and he takes out a 20 dollar bills and waves it around. That’s ALL that matters to them! Always cutting! They get bonuses, but they cut all the workers! It really sucks!“All they care about is the Green! Just the green, that’s the color they care about! (more bill waving). It really sucks!”

There is not a sound from anyone. I am genuinely surprised as I always had the impression that post office jobs were (generally) reasonably well paid, and pretty highly valued by workers. I have seen a lot of PO workers under stress from large crowds during holidays, but I had never heard one explode in front of the public like this.

He snaps back to business and completes my transaction. I pay and go.

A few days later I’m back at my regular downtown post office, and it’s a bit slow at that time with no one else around, and so I ask my regular clerk what the hell that was all about. He asks me to describe the clerk. When I do he rolls his eyes and says “Oh that’s xxxx! He’s a piece of work!”

I ask why he is so angry. He says

“For 20 years ending just last year xxxxx had the world’s best job as he spent 8 hours a day, 5 days a week servicing (filling) 3 automatic stamp machines on the north end of town in various locations. A new Postmaster came on board last year and said “WTH!” when he saw this and put him on counter duty. He’s having to do real work for the first time in his life, and he can’t stand it, and BTW he HAS been trained, he just refuses to learn.”

I tell him that I found it especially surprising that anyone would bellyache like that about a fairly desirable job. He said that he tells any complainers in his post office to move on. There’s 100 people waiting for your job if you don’t like it.

His ending statement summed it up. “No pleasing some people”

2

…because the mail never stops! It just keeps coming and coming and coming! There’s never a letup, it’s relentless! Every day it piles up, more and more, and you gotta get it out, but the more you get out the more keeps coming in, and then the barcode reader breaks AND THEN IT’S PUBLISHER’S CLEARINGHOUSE DAY!!!

3

Why are you not complaining to the Post Office head? The public would benefit from a new employee and this is what needs to be documented to get rid of someone like that.

4

I thought about it, but decided I didn’t want to stick my nose into it. There was also the self interested concern that if I ratted him out, and they did not get rid of him, and he found out or deduced it was me that tattled on him God knows what would happen to my shipped ebay packages if I used that location again. If they let him loaf for 20 YEARS I’m not full of confidence that they would get rid of him.

5

They call it ‘going postal’ for a reason, y’know.

6

I used to work for the Post Office in Canada, and yes, to an extent, I can relate to what he said. Back in the late 80s and early 90s when I was on staff, management seemed to be more concerned with shaving staff and killing positions in order to get the books balanced, which meant doing more work with less people. Strangely, though, the President and other high-ranking staff always got a raise every year, but if those in the rank and file even asked for a raise at contract time, we were usually forced to go on strike to get it. Back in those days it was all about job security and not so much the money, anyway.

The problem with the USPS is that they don’t even have the right to go on strike, because they are forced right into binding arbitration, where they usually wind up having to compromise instead of getting what they wanted. As the USPS is currently undergoing what our Post Office did when I worked there, it’s hardly surprising there are little displays such as this going on today.

Yes, it is a desirable job, but management makes it frustrating. I would love to see the types of things that create grievences in the USPS; I doubt that they are very much different from the things I used to file greivences on as Shop Steward.

7

Well, of course they’re not going to get rid of him (unless there’s already an established pattern of outbursts like that), but there can be disciplinary action taken (most likely in the form of a counseling session).

And if a supervisor happened to see that, it’s likely he already got dinged anyway, even if no customer reported it.

8

This particular story might not be a good example, but the above sentiment is pretty shitty when it come employee relations. A 10% unemployment rate doesn’t give an employer carte blanche to treat their workers like rented mules.

9

Well possibly, but PO jobs are generally considered pretty sweet as far as counter clerk type jobs go re pay and benefits. I rarely, if ever, hear of a PO worker quitting of their own accord. The issue is the grind to stand up for hours on end in one place doing the same thing over and over again. I’d go nuts in short order.

10

I read someone somewhere who called the U.S. post office the closest thing we have to Soviet Russia. They forgot the DMV.

My friend, a new mail carrier, got a highly coveted route when two carriers, longtime antagonists somehow, got in a fistfight and were both fired. That would have been something to see.